It really sucks to be robbed. And the seeming apathy is maddening. In defense of my city, though, I must stress that Cory lives in one of my favorite—but among the very worst—spots for this sort of thing. It's not just that it's the Mission. It's 16th-and-Missionish Drug Central. It's not all quite that bad. As he mentions later, "This crap makes me want to move, if not back to Toronto then at least to some yuppies-and-dogs neighborhood like Noe Valley or Pacific Heights..." Well, Noe Valley (where I live) and Pacific Heights are still part of San Francisco. As is the non-feces-strewn (and more reasonably priced) Sunset, Richmond, Twin Peaks, and lots of other neighborhoods. I don't have many other real cities to compare SF to. And it could be a lot better. But let's not damn the whole town because the drug dealers have successfully taken over some turf. At least it's not the "safe, bland, quiet desperation of the 'burbs"!
And he's pissed: "This is the kind of thing that drives me completely nuts about San Francisco. There is visible corruption, felony crimes, and human degradation everywhere, far more so than any other city I've been to in North America or Europe (excluding Naples). There are people squatting and taking dumps, there are streets whose sidewalks are lined with tents and whose gutters are lined with sealed, fermenting 40 oz. malt liquor bottles filled with urine deposited by tent-dwellers who don't want to live in their own piss. Everywhere you go in the city, you step through drifts of discarded pipes, needles, condoms."